This blog is a result of the heavy censoring of the media by the military dictatorship regime.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Fiji and Tonga ranked low in media report

By Josephine Latu - Pacific Media Watch

Fiji and Tonga have the least free media among Pacific Island states, according to Freedom House’s just released 2009 annual report on global press freedom.

Fiji was ranked 85th out of a total of 195 countries - dropping from 80th last year, while Tonga maintained its rank at 73rd.

Along with East Timor (78), they were the only countries in the region to be categorised as only “partly free”. The rest were free.

New Zealand and Palau enjoyed top status in the region, tying at 11th spot worldwide. Last year New Zealand ranked 8th and Palau at 12.

Both were rated to have higher press freedom than Britain (27) and Australia (38).

The Freedom House ratings were calculated based on three criteria - the legal environment in which the media operates, the political influences on reporting, and the economic pressures of distributing news.

The report also stated that after two decades of progress, press freedom is now in decline in almost every part of the world.

Only 17 percent of the world’s population enjoy free media in their countries, although key trends showed that threats to media freedom are evident even in established democracies.

The report stated that media freedom remained “fragile” in emerging democracies, and that authoritative governments were increasing their control over media. Also, restrictive laws and physical attacks continued to hinder press freedom around the world.

However, Freedom House reported that compared to the rest of the world, the Asia-Pacific region as a whole boasted a relatively high level of press freedom.

At the same time, it underlined that Fiji media suffered from “official pressure”, which caused its decline in ranking, and cited the deportation of two foreign national publishers and the Fiji Times held in contempt for publishing “unflattering letters about three judges”.

The recent media censorship crackdown under Fiji’s military regime is expected to pull the nation’s ranking down even further in future.

2 comments:

All this and yet the regime continues to insist it is doing the best thing for Fiji. Amazing that they actually believe their own lies. Our democratically elected government with the SDL-FLP coalition at least listened to unpalatable truths and tried to address them. God bless Fiji

Why won't Fiji be ranked lowly? Deportation of three newspaper publishers - Russel Hunter from the Fiji Sun - Evan Hannah from the Fiji Times - and Rex Gardner also from the Fiji Times; intimidation and harassment of journalists and stoning of Netani Rika's vehicle; and the latest censorship requiring the news media to report pro-interim government stories and presence of censor teams with police in newsrooms are cases of the worst forms of trampling on media freedom anywhere in the world. So no surprises for the low-down award